History of Bloom's Taxonomy

The original Bloom's Taxonomy was drafted in 1956 after Benjamin S. Bloom and several of his associates set about developing a framework that specified statements that could be used to standardize the way that educators classified learning outcomes (Krathwohl, 2002). The taxonomy was organized around the six categories of the cognitive domain: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. It began to gain popularity as educators realized how beneficial it was to have a common language that organized cognitive skills hierarchically (Cochran & Conklin, 2007; Hanna, 2007; Krathwohl, 2002).

In 1994, one of the original authors, David R. Krathwohl, published an article that offered several suggestions for how the Taxonomy could be revised and updated (Krathwohl & Anderson, 2010). Krathwohl collaborated with Lorin Anderson, one of Bloom's former students, to organize a small group that began meeting biannually to discuss the revisions (Churches, 2008). These meetings continued for five years with the final draft being published in 2001 (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001).

The most significant revisions made entailed changing the list of cognitive processes from noun forms into verb forms (Krathwohl, 2002; Krathwohl & Anderson, 2010). Application, Analysis, and Evaluation were thus renamed Apply, Analyze, and Evaluate. In addition, several of the categories were given new names. Knowledge became Remembering and Comprehension became Understanding. This latter change addressed a long-standing criticism of the original Taxonomy, as the term "understand" was often used somewhat ambiguously to refer to areas of learning between Comprehension and Synthesis (Krathwohl, 2002). The revised Taxonomy also switched Synthesis and Evaluation, with Synthesis being renamed Create (Krathwohl, 2002; Krathwohl& Anderson, 2010). This final change addresses the action of constructing new meaning, which Krathwohl & Anderson (2010) explain, "goes beyond merely making new knowledge fit with existing knowledge as Synthesize suggests" (p.64).



References

Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. R. (Eds.) (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of educational objectives. New York: Longman.

Churches, A. (2008, April 1). Bloom's Taxonomy blooms digitally. Tech & Learning. Retrieved from http://www.techlearning.com/article/8670.

Cochran, D., & Conklin, J. (2007). A new Bloom: Transforming learning. Learning & Leading with Technology, 34(5), 22-25. Retrieved from www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/EJ779824.pdf

Hanna, W. (2007). The new Bloom's Taxonomy: Implications for music education. Arts Education Policy Review, 108(4),7-16.

Krathwohl, D. R. (2002). A revision of Bloom's Taxonomy: An overview. Theory Into Practice, 41(4), 212-218.

Krathwohl, D. R., & Anderson, L. W. (2010). Merlin C. Wittrock and the revision of Bloom's Taxonomy. Educational Psychologist, 45(1), 64-65.